These purported UFO documents changed the course of the culture of UFO belief.

The Majestic 12 documents are the Holy Bible of UFO enthusiasts. These documents, which appear to be declassified official US government memos written in 1947, confirm everything believed by many in the UFO community: that the United States knows all about aliens visiting the Earth in their flying saucers. Many say the documents are a hoax; others say the hoax claimants are all a part of the coverup. But no matter what’s true, Majestic 12 has had a major impact on the entire course of UFO belief in popular culture. Today we’re going to see if we can learn where they came from.

In December of 1984, a manila envelope dropped through the mail slot in the front door of Jaime Shandera, a writer and UFO researcher. It contained a roll of 35mm film. The postmark on the envelope told him little; it was from Albuquerque, New Mexico, but there was no return address or indication of who might have sent it or what it was. Shandera called his partner in UFO research, author Bill Moore. They developed the film, and found that each frame was a photograph of a page of a document. Printed out, it formed what’s become known as the Majestic 12 documents, usually abbreviated MJ-12.

The document purported to be a memo written in 1952 by the director of the CIA, advising President Eisenhower of the existence of a group of twelve scientists and military officials who were assembled in 1947 on the orders of President Truman to investigate the crash of the flying saucer in Roswell. The memo advised the President of the importance of the Majestic 12 group, and suggested that the project be continued.

Moore and Shandera decided to keep the documents secret, sharing them only with a select few UFO researchers, including Stanton Friedman, the original author of the Roswell mythology. Word began to leak out to the UFO community that some documents existed, but Moore, Shandera, and Friedman weren’t sharing. In 1986, an anonymous source described the documents to British UFO author Jenny Randles, but she declined them. In 1987, the documents were received anonymously by another British UFO author, Timothy Good. He published them in his book Above Top Secret. Moore realized the time for secrecy was past, and he went public with them at a UFO conference in June of that year. Suddenly everyone knew about MJ-12, and even the mainstream media reported on them.

Skeptical UFO author Philip Klass sent a copy of the documents to the FBI, which immediately investigated their authenticity. In their report dated December 1988, the FBI stated:

The Office of Special Investigations, US Air Force, advised on November 30, 1988, that the document was fabricated. Copies of that document have been distributed to various parts of the United States. The document is completely bogus.

Of course, even if the document was authentic, its widespread public availability might well persuade the government to claim that it is bogus. How is one to know? A useful exercise might be to look at the wider context in which the document was delivered to UFO authors.

You say you believe the government is hiding something at Area 51–captured alien spacecraft, perhaps? The conjectures and rumors surrounding Area 51 comprise a revered conspiracy theory (many theories, actually). Do you believe the aliens among us are the hidden driving force in human history? That top world leaders (and they aren’t who most people think they are!) are cooperating for personal gain with the alien “reptile overlords” to bring about the enslavement of our species? You might be a conspiracist.

You might buy into one or more conspiracy theories without being an all-out conspiracist. Conspiracism is a world view that sees history as driven primarily by interwoven webs of secret conspiracies. Conspiracy theories are leaner, more restrained, more limited in scope than conspiracism. A conspiracy theory alleges that a secret conspiracy involving hidden actors is behind particular historical events. Its explanation for events usually runs counter to the official or mainstream account, which is itself seen as an elaborate fabrication.

Test your favorite conspiracy against the following components typical of conspiracism and conspiracy theories:

THEY (the conspirators) are a relatively small group, but powerful and corrupt. They are evil, or at least selfish, acting in their own interest and against the public interest. They have great foresight, patience, and deviousness. Nevertheless, they are not all-powerful or even that smart, really, since WE have figured them out.

WE are a small, dedicated group of freedom fighters and freethinkers. We are soldiers, rebels in the fight for good against evil.

YOU are clueless. Why can’t you see what’s going on here? (Conspiracy theorists place most people in this group.)

THEY have hidden or destroyed all the evidence that would implicate them and have manufactured false evidence that exculpates them.

YOU are close-minded. In fact, you are probably one of THEM.

The comfort of conspiracy theory is that it provides a well-defined enemy and a sense of control (or at least structure) in the face of upheaval and disempowerment; the tendency to perceive conspiracy is more common in groups experiencing social isolation or political marginalization. The freedom fighters of conspiracy theory need not see themselves as being at the mercy of irresistible, inexplicable, or random natural or social forces, but as soldiers in a just cause. Many, if not most, conspiracy theories probably result from the human tendency to look for pattern in chaos-even if there isn’t any.

Conspiracy theories and conspiracism share three problems:

Unfalsifiability

Fallacy

Naivete

Unfalsifiability

The main problem with any particular conspiracy theory is not that it’s wrong, but that it’s inarguable; not that it’s false, but that it is unfalsifiable. Because it is unfalsifiable, a conspiracy theory is not provable or disprovable.

Of course, the first thing we have to do is listen to some samples. While these play, keep in mind how easy it is to fake videos such as these today. Sounds can be taken from the Internet from any source, and it requires no more than journeyman computer skills to add a sound to a video and apply any manner of reverb or background noise to it. But regardless of their origin, these are the types of sounds that characterize the Sky Trumpets phenomenon; so if there is something to explain, this is what they sound like.

So far, all of these Sky Trumpet recordings were posted to the Internet after 2011. Here is what amateur researchers have determined is the earliest of these videos and certainly the most popular with over 4 million views, and it was uploaded to YouTube in August of 2011, from Kiev in Ukraine, by someone calling herself “Russian Kristina”:

Since this video went live, there have been any number of copycat hoax videos posted using the exact same audio file; including one that got a bit of press, by a girl who did the whole thing in five minutes to show her friends how easy it was to make a hoax Sky Trumpets video.

But hoaxes aside, it’s a virtual certainty that at least some of these videos are genuine, and represent real sounds heard by real people who recorded them and posted them online in good faith. Given that, is it then proven that Sky Trumpets are a real — and unknown to science — phenomenon?

Like this:

One Week on a Cruise for Conspiracy Theorists

By the time intergalactic warfare historian Laura Eisenhower told me that she was secretly recruited to go to Mars, I was way past the point of being surprised. I’d simply heard so much of this kind of talk over the past few days that it seemed totally normal. It was day five of the week-long Conspira Sea Cruise, a gathering of conspiracy theorists (for lack of a better umbrella term) and 80 or so curious followers. We had all boarded a massive cruise ship to listen to the speakers’ musings and philosophies on a range of topics — ancient intergalactic warfare, crop circles, magical vibrations, chemtrails, the government’s control of the weather, alien politicians, and wishing boxes — your normal vacation chatter. And all of this was more or less unbeknownst to the other 2,900 cruise passengers who were oiled up, buffet-ready, and vacationing all around us. For my part, I was there to host and produce a video on the seminar and its characters, and thus, I had been inundated with far-out tales since the moment I stepped onboard the massive, 18-deck ship, which was, at the time that Laura and I eventually sat down by the adults-only hot tub, hurling its way, well-announced by Motown music and exhaust smoke, towards Cabo San Lucas.

It was too late, also, to have the kind of out-of-body, how-the-hell-did-I-get-here moments you might think I’d be having. (That moment had come the night before, at the cruise’s Love Boat-themed disco, where I found myself doing the Hustle, as instructed by motivational dancers, alongside the self-proclaimed leading expert on Area 51.) Instead, what happened when Laura told me that she had been contacted to go to Mars was that I nodded my head, squinted into the sun, smiled, and leaned back on my sun-deck chair, not significantly more taken by the notion of her potential inter-stellar venture than I was by, say, the whereabouts of that evening’s bingo game.

I wanted to know what Laura knew, to understand what she experienced, but I didn’t want to tiptoe further into the complicated attic of her memory by asking skeptical or damning questions, for fear of putting her too pointedly on the spot. What I came to find out was that she was targeted to “travel off-planet” by a man she dated. That she did not, in fact, fulfill the request to go to Mars because it felt like a dark journey with untrustworthy people.

Conspiracy theorists have a reputation for being angry and relentless . . .